Music cufflinks created by Simone Walsh

This post is to shamelessly plug the wonderful handmade jewellery designed and created by Simone Walsh.

A few weeks ago, we hired a suit for the eldest Teen's school formal and seeing as his shirt had french cuffs, we needed a pair of cufflinks. The easy option would have been to hire a pair, or to simply buy a suitably neutral pair from the nearest department store. As the Teen loves music, I thought buying a pair of music themed cufflink would be a good idea, the trouble was, no department or jewellery store had such a pair - that I could find... What to do? Well, turn to twitter of course. There in my feed was @simonewalsh tweeting about being in her studio creating her current pieces. Bingo! I would contact Simone and ask if she could create the cufflinks. Of course she could! So, a few short emails later and all I had to do was sit back and wait for the cufflinks to arrive in the post. The whole process took less than a week - I still think this is an amazing feat! It really was very easy, payment was organised through PayPal, the cufflinks were express posted and arrived in plenty of time. Simone enclosed the important care instructions and the cufflinks were beautifully wrapped. What more could I ask for? Well, how about a special discount offer for my next purchase - yes, special voucher enclosed - excellent!

Here's an image of the cufflinks, the music is from one of the Teen's own compositions.

What did the Teen think of his cufflinks? He loved them!

Need some inspiration for gift giving ideas for that special person? Then look no further than Simone's website. Happy shopping!

 

 

Long Live Rock and Roll

At the moment I'm reading the book "10 Songs that Changed the World" by June Skinner Sawyers. I should actually be reading that Sister's Keeper book, but that's another story... Back to the songs that changed the world, I'm only at number three, and I am totally engrossed with the amount of information that has been compiled for the songs. The book is a mixture of history and entertainment - so would that be histortainment or enterstory? Who knows. I'm not going to spoil it and announce all the songs here - you'll have to read the book yourself for that! I will say that the book is a trivia-night nut's delight! The question remains: will I be able to retain the information, and will I also be able to retrieve the information at the crucial time during a future trivia night? Only time will tell.

Sawyers' discusses the many aspects of the song "Hound Dog" in particular as sung by Elvis Presley, and how that changed the way we listened to and enjoyed music worldwide. Notably, she talks about the time Presley sang that particular tune on The Milton Berle Show in 1956. In Sawyer's words, "he slowed the rhythm right down to a licentious bump and grind to such an extent that everyone knew what was on his mind. The arbiters of good taste must have felt that the world was coming to an end, and all decency thrown out the window". Phew - thank goodness for the world of YouTube, because this "licentious bump and grind" I had to see for myself - could it have been so risque? Well, for 1956 it certainly was as Presley was only shown from the waist up in future performances, so as not to offend the television audiences...

Here's the clip from that historic performance, I won't spoil it and tell you when he slows that rhythm down, you'll simply have to see it all for yourself. Enjoy! Long live Rock and Roll!